the birthday meme

[beige_alert]

On February 19:

1600 - The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina exploded in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.

1674 - England and the Netherlands sign the Peace of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, which renamed it New York.

1847 - The Donner Party is rescued. It is noted that some of the survivors seem to be remarkably well-fed considering their ordeal.

1942 - World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to Japanese internment camps.

1964 - Paul Simon writes "The Sounds of Silence," the song which, in a year and a half, will catapult him and Art Garfunkel to stardom as Simon & Garfunkel.

1986 - The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station.

Births:

1473 - Nicolaus Copernicus, mathematician and astronomer (d. 1543)

1859 - Svante Arrhenius, Swedish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927)

1940 - Smokey Robinson, American musician

1948 - Pim Fortuyn, Dutch politician (d. 2002)

1952 - Amy Tan, American novelist

One not in the Wikipedia: Rudolf von Beckerath, 1907, founder of Rudolf von Beckerath Orgelbau GmbH, which company built the organ aryana_filker plays.

And also jrittenhouse.

Deaths:

1709 - Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, Japanese shogun (b. 1646)

1916 - Ernst Mach, Austrian-Czech physicist and philosopher (b. 1838)

1936 - Billy Mitchell, American general and military aviation pioneer (b. 1879)

1997 - Deng Xiaoping, Chinese Communist leader and revolutionary (b. 1904)

Also, it is the season holiday Chaoflux in Discordianism.